The present invention relates to a home monitoring system including a computer assisted reflectance photometer designed for measuring blood glucose values at home, and for storing and transmitting these and other data to a physician in connection with administration of treatment for diabetes mellitus.
In recent years there has been an enormous growth of monitoring blood glucose in the home. It has recently been estimated that 8% of the 5 million Americans currently diagnosed as suffering from diabetes mellitus monitor blood glucose at home.
Home glucose monitoring is an attempt to institute cybernetic control in the management of diabetes. In theory, patients monitor their blood glucose multiple times a day and record this information in log books. The information is then used by the patient's physician to periodically adjust the dosage of insulin or other therapeutic agent. Sometimes, the insulin-taking patient is given an algorithm to make insulin adjustments himself based on the data he collects.
In order for home glucose monitoring to impact significantly on the treatment of a given patient, one must assume that (1) the patient monitors home glucose as prescribed using correct techniques, (2) the patient records values reliably in a log book, (3) the patient comes to the physician's offices periodically to review his or her data, (4) the physician is able to make treatment recommendations based on viewing this data, and (5) the patient is in some cases able to adjust his or her own insulin based on this data.
These assumptions, however, frequently do not hold in practice patients often forget to monitor their glucose at the appropriate time; or, when they do they often use poor technique, making the values unreliable. Data may not be recorded properly in log books. Even when data is properly collected and recorded, most physicians cannot make intelligent treatment decisions by reviewing pages of raw data. Finally, insulin adjustment by the patient using data gathered from home glucose monitoring applied to an algorithm is a process too complicated for most patients to follow.